


hit the ground running

by keouil



Series: we can be divine [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Hatake Kakashi-centric, Uchiha Sasuke-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26819398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keouil/pseuds/keouil
Summary: sasuke isn't kakashi, but makes the mistakes he couldn't.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Uchiha Obito, Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Series: we can be divine [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931971
Comments: 7
Kudos: 64





	hit the ground running

**Author's Note:**

> kakashi, before / sasuke, after.

kakashi was born five pounds light and forty inches short.

he was very small, not alarmingly so, but smaller than what was expected of the first white fang offspring – a legend famed not only for his battle skills but the impressive physicality that came hand in hand with it.

when kakashi was five, he still only barely came up to his father’s knees and had to nudge his pant leg whenever he had something to say, usually involving not-so-subtle jabs at the man’s genes for cursing him to his puny state.

determined not to be caged into this petite frame and naturally weak stamina, he grows up and wills his body to reject whatever shortcomings he was naturally born with. 

until by the grace of god, and not at all the extra muscle training and enhancement pills, his long-awaited growth spurt all but overwhelms him by the time he turns fifteen. at eighteen, he towers over half of anbu and is konoha’s tallest jonin second only to sarutobi “human tree” asuma.

what goes unsaid, is for all the years he spent growing into his impressive build, are the ones the people who have since gone never had the chance to.

protein pills and muscle supplements aren’t the only drugs he takes when he reaches twenty.

* * *

sasuke was born eight pounds heavy and forty eight inches long.

safe to say, he was a very healthy baby. with all the pregnancy preparation mikoto was forced to undergo not just as an uchiha, but the uchiha _matriarch,_ the rest of the clan expected nothing less for the head family’s second born. 

no one was even the least bit surprised when the first words out of his mouth were _ka_ or _fire._

but actually, sasuke meant to say kasan – as in _okaa-san,_ their _mother_ – but his mouth still found it hard to form the ‘o’ sound. itachi only knows this because he knows everything about his little brother, but also because he saw his tiny hands reach for mikoto every time fugaku made him present his latest achievement during clan dinners for hours on end.

then years pass and suddenly his pre-mature triumph is yesterday news. 

because all at once it has since been replaced by countless high stores and perfected katas and growing height and everything else his father urged him to be good at, that he in turn forced himself to be _perfect_ with.

* * *

kakashi meets sasuke when he is five feet and forty-two kilograms.

something shifts inside him when he sees that this kid is much taller and bigger than he ever was at that age. maybe it had something to do with his clan, because sasuke’s physique resembled obito’s more than it did his, and his heart pinches a little.

only the last remaining uchiha heir is nothing like the last uchiha he knew. 

because sasuke was _everything_ obito would have _loathed_ – prideful, arrogant, and better at him in everything. in more ways than he would have cared to admit, the ease that came with mastering justsus or crafting strategies was more kakashi than it was obito. 

not that everything came easy for him, and with what he knew of the uchiha massacre, it couldn’t have been a walk in the park for sasuke either – but he finds it refreshing to associate something else with that moniker that wasn’t his blinding eye or demolished bridges.

so he takes it upon himself the personal mission of molding this one into everything obito would have been proud of.

* * *

sasuke meets kakashi when he is too tall and too big.

 _i hate you,_ he told them. he would have taken offense if he still could have taken offense but his brother took every ounce of feeling that wasn’t hatred or revenge with him when he made him mercilessly remember every other feeling in the world that night.

still he summons just enough of wariness and judgement for this man assigned to be their glorified babysitter. 

but he refuses to call him sensei, that was too personal and he knows there is nothing this man could teach him that he can’t teach himself. because the last time he depended on someone he was forced to let go of love – _and he had_ **_so much of it_** _for the world, his mother, the special onigiri she made for him, even thought the world of his brother once_ – 

but then that was all in the past. 

much like this aggravating thing called _team seven_ that this too tall and too big babysitter seemed to enjoy saying a little too much because he can’t seem to go two sentences during mission briefs without mentioning _my cute little genin_ at least once.

* * *

sasuke isn’t kakashi, but when he leaves the village he does both of them a favour.

* * *

for a man with an ever-growing mission ledger and the financial compensation to back it up, kakashi has never felt the need to splurge on anything that wasn’t a basic necessity for survival.

his apartment of more than two decades is barren, with the only thing passing off as remotely decorative being two small wooden frames serving as both a memento of his past and reminder of his future. but even that was a stretch.

_(minato-sensei insisted on the picture and guilt-tripped him into displaying it as a housewarming gift, sakura demanded he have something with a pop of colour in his otherwise lonesome bachelor pad)_

but aside from being coerced by an outside influence into livening up his living situation, still he couldn’t find it in himself to do it willingly. 

because a homey place meant a place to call home and never in his life has he felt at home _anywhere_ aside from maybe his father’s arms or when minato-sensei invited them over but as it was both of them were _dead_ now so home was never a one-bedroom apartment so much as a tether – something someone could box him into like his fragile infant body.

because no one knew what to do with a boy so young who lost too many that even with all the might of the third and fourth combined they too were at an impasse how to make him heal from all this world has made him gone through.

so _no_ , kakashi didn’t spend hours mulling over _discounted sofas_ or _low-maintenance plants_ – because he never felt like he had any place to himself, much less in the universe.

he would have gone away, rebelled, yelled, screamed – _something, anything_ to distract or call attention to the inner turmoil he had to face every time he closed his eyes and saw a gaping hole in the chest or a bloody eye throbbing amongst rubble. maybe he could have even went somewhere far, to a place no one knew what his white hair meant or what the red eye symbolised, and maybe even call that place home. 

because kakashi has shared so many of everything with other people – his father to the village, his eye with obito, his genius with the world – and yet there is still nothing in this big universe uniquely his. even if he was never one to brag, maybe once he would have liked to be someone in full and not half.

but instead, he stays.

* * *

sasuke couldn’t be kakashi, because kakashi lost people at his own hand and sasuke lost people at the hand of someone else.

* * *

when sasuke leaves konoha, the severed bonds with the people he left behind aren’t the only things he cuts ties with.

he untangles himself from anything to do with the peculiar thing that is belonging. not to the government that bred people like _aniki who killed okaasan_ , not to the school that taught naruto _how to be stronger than him_ , and especially not to the whole system of self-sacrificial insanity that _led death to people’s door and called it honour_.

so he goes away to a place people knew very well what the last red eye meant and what the last harbinger of his last name symbolised. and for years he exploits that knowing to his advantage, because for all itachi has taken from him, this is one thing he left behind.

but living in caves meant living in secret and even if people knew _of_ him, they didn’t _understand_ him. the last time someone attempted to, he made sure they understood it would be their last.

* * *

sasuke begins where kakashi ends.

in the nature of genius, they have the physics down easy. no combination is ever too complex or hand seal too fast because being good at what they do is like breathing air into their lungs – easy, natural, automatic.

but the delicate line where they intersect is the same one their opposing threads do – in that sasuke has never expected to be seen for his darkness by someone filled with so much light in him, or that kakashi has never paused to think maybe there could be life outside shinobi politics by someone who wasn’t bound by it.

sasuke is kakashi when he aims a full-blown chidori at naruto but intentionally misses or when he chooses the easiest single-layered genjutsu because he knows that’s his weakest or when he fights in a war he started because someone believed in peace –

or when he comes back, not to his village, but to _him._


End file.
